Oxford, 3 May 2005 …. ProImmune Ltd, a leading provider of research reagents and services for immune monitoring, has launched a unique MHC Pentamer Library product, called ProVE^TM.  Using a new rapid parallel synthesis process, ProImmune has been able to make sets of high quality MHC Pentamers available at a much lower price per reagent than ever before.

The availability of cost effective ProVE MHC Pentamer Libraries from ProImmune makes using MHC multimers routinely for epitope screening and validation projects a realistic option, for the first time. This opens up new applications for MHC multimer analysis and will bridge the gap between the screening of high numbers of T cell epitopes and the in-depth monitoring and characterisation of single specificity T cell immune responses.

Commenting on the launch of ProVE, Dr Nikolai Schwabe, CEO of ProImmune said: “We believe that introducing ProVE MHC Pentamer Libraries addresses a real unmet need in the discovery and validation of important new disease targets for cancers, infectious diseases and in transplantation. This new product range complements our high end Pro5^TM MHC Pentamers, which are typically used for in-depth study and monitoring of immune responses against validated antigens. The release of ProVE marks another important milestone for ProImmune, setting us apart as a leader in product innovation in the immunology research field."

In many of areas of disease research that are centred on antigen activity, epitope analysis is a bottleneck step, limiting progress. The new ProVE MHC Pentamer Libraries will provide a novel approach for identifying candidate epitopes after mass screening has been completed. This will allow rapid and conclusive validation of tens or even hundreds of high likelihood candidate antigens, thereby improving the entire epitope discovery processes significantly. Applications include research in the areas of cancer, infectious diseases or complications associated with transplantation, as well as monitoring the response to therapies such as new drugs and vaccines.

-ENDS-

For more information, please contact:

At the Company:

Dr Nikolai Schwabe, ProImmune

Tel: +44(0)1865 405 128

Email: nschwabe@proimmune.com   

Media enquiries:

Dr Rebecca Todd, Northbank Communications

Tel: + 44(0)20 7886 81157

Email: r.todd@northbankcommunications.com

Notes to Editors:

ProImmune Ltd is a private biotechnology company headquartered in Oxford, UK, that specialises in providing quality research reagents for monitoring the condition of the immune system.  ProImmune has a wide range of customers from leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, as well as clinical and academic research institutes throughout the world.  The Company, founded in November 1999, has secured R&D funding from several DTI Smart, EUREKA and EU Framework VI project grants and has been profitable since its inception. ProImmune owns a portfolio of international patents and patent applications protecting its core products and technologies . The Company also has offices in the USA and France.

For more information on ProImmune, visit www.proimmune.com